The Troll Chronicles I - Sakura and the Priest
by Iruka Sensei871
Summary: When a handsome young man arrives in Konoha, Sakura has to make some tough decisions. What does being a Konoha ninja mean to her? Is being a doctor enough to fill the void in her heart? Dedicated to Hitori Ecchi.


AN: This was inspired by Kill Yourself Virgin. Our Guest Troll (who I will refer to as Hitori Ecchi. Look it up for a laugh) responded so much that I'm going to use his words as the basis for other stories, because it amuses me to do so. I will create art out of shit. I thought about doing this as a chaptered fic, but I plan on writing separate, stand alone stories.

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Kujyou looked up at Konoha as he passed through the city gates. The city was large, and loud, and full of color. The Hokage Tower dominated the center of town, but it was the hospital that Kujyou headed toward. It was the end of a long trip, and he shifted his pack and made his way there. He passed brightly colored market stalls and women with much less clothing than he was accustomed to. He supposed the hot weather made such adjustments necessary, but he kept finding himself looking at the pavement to avoid distraction.

He limped toward the hospital, ignoring the pain in his foot as he focused on his goal. It was Hinata who first noticed him. He looked tired, travel-worn, and yet he carried a dignity about him.

"Did you ever see someone like that?" Hinata asked her friends.

"No," Neji said. "He's some kind of priest or monk. I've never seen anyone wear orange robes like that though."

"I don't know," Kiba said. "I don't think priests carry weapons. What is that thing anyway?"

The priest carried a long staff, taller even than him, with a nasty looking crescent blade on one end, and something that looked like a shovel on the other, although he thought that the edges of the shovel looked sharp.

Kujyou stumbled and went to one knee, the bells on his staff jingling as he held onto the staff for support.

Hinata ran to him. "Are you injured?" she asked.

"Yes. My foot was injured in a fight." He stood and used the staff as a walking stick to get off the road. He sat in the shade of a sakura tree and took off a sandal, revealing a foot wrapped in a dirty bandage.

"You might not want to look," he said. "It's probably bad. I'm heading toward the hospital anyway, but the bindings are loose. I'm sure if I rewrap it I'll make it there."

Hinata knelt by him and began to unwrap the bandage. "I'm a medic," she said. "Let me look at it."

He blushed as she looked at the wound. "How long have you been walking on this?" she asked. "It's infected."

"About a week," Kujyou said. "I have to get a package to Tsunade-sama or Haruno Sakura. I was told to find either of them at the hospital."

Hinata pushed healing chakra into the wound, and Kujyou watched as it grew together before his eyes.

"I'll help you get to the hospital," Hinata said.

He stood using the staff. "I can walk," he said.

An odd, dirty man stood across the street. He pointed a finger at them accusingly.

"Who is that?" the priest asked.

"I don't know," Hinata said. "Just some weirdo. He's been running around saying strange things to people."

Hinata watched the priest shakily make his way toward the hospital. He was well built, but she thought he looked weak. They walked in silence, and he stumbled twice, but they made it to the hospital. Hinata left him in a chair while she explained the situation at the desk. When she went back to him, he was sleeping, sitting slumped in the chair.

"No, don't stand," Hinata said, but he had already put weight on his foot, and it twisted under him, dumping him unceremoniously on the floor. The pain as his ankle snapped was the last thing he remembered as his abused body gave in to unconsciousness.

He woke in a hospital bed, his country nose bothered by the unfamiliar smells of astringent cleanliness. Nothing around him made any sense to him. Machines beeped nearby, and there were tubes in his arm. He saw some sort of container at the end of the tubes fill with clear liquid, but he didn't know what it was.

Everything was wrong about the place. Nothing in nature was that white, or that clean. It was as if the place was made of material from another plane.

 _Did I die?_ He wondered. _Am I in the afterlife? This isn't how they said it would be._

 _It's because I'm so far away from home. I can't be in the right afterlife. It must be their afterlife._

A woman came into the room. She looked like a lot of the southern women he'd seen, pale and lightly dressed.

"Where am I?" he asked.

The nurse looked at his chart while she talked. "Konoha hospital. You broke your ankle, and you were seriously exhausted. You had a parasite as well, which we removed. The infection in your foot has been treated, but you need rest. Do you have family we can contact?"

"No," the priest replied. "I have to deliver my package to either Tsunade-sama or Haruno Sakura." He sounded out the names carefully, the foreign sounds difficult for him. "I was given their names by my master. Where is my pack?"

"It's here," the nurse said, pointing to his few belongings that had been piled in the corner. "Try to stay calm. I'll see if Dr. Haruno is on duty."

A man appeared in the doorway after she left, a shabby derelict of a being. He pointed at Kujyou with a shaky hand. "Kill yourself, virgin F**," he whispered, and left.

Without his pack or weapon, the priest had no means to fight the foul…whatever it was, but it didn't come back. Instead one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen walked in. She had the same pale skin and embarrassingly scarce dress of the southern women, but it was those eyes that pulled him in. Green and fierce, a sea of destruction and promise.

"Surely they don't have dragons for doctors in the south," he said.

Sakura raised an eyebrow and looked over his chart. "No sign of concussion," she said.

"I'm sorry. It's just that I've never seen anyone with eyes that held such power, such beauty." As soon as he said it he wished he could take it back. "I…forgive me. I am still a bit lightheaded." He smiled, revealing a broken tooth in an otherwise perfect smile. Sakura thought it gave him a bit of a roguish look.

"I was told you have something to give me?" Sakura asked.

"Yes," he said. "It's in my pack." He pointed toward the chair. "Could you take these things out of me first?" he asked, lifting his arm. "Why did you chain me to a machine with whatever these tubes are?"

"They put medicine in your body," Sakura said, "and they measure your heart rate and breathing."

"It's very different from the medicine we practice."

She handed him his pack, and he pulled a wooden box from it. It had ornate carvings of various plants.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I was the youngest of four sent out. Two of them died when we were attacked by bandits, and the other one abandoned our task when he grew tired in a village and decided to stay there. No one told me what we were delivering. My master travels often, and he came back and told us to bring this here."

Sakura handed it to him. "Open it then."

The box wasn't locked. Kujyou unlatched the two fasteners and opened the lid. Five roots resembling ginger, but with a darker, dull brown coloration lay in there.

Sakura gasped. "Rhizoma Paridis. This is very rare. Is it a trade?"

"No," he said. "I don't know why, but one of the elders in our order directed us to bring this here and give it to you, and that the person you needed to treat would grow well. I don't know how he knew who you are."

"There is a patient we haven't been able to treat. That's amazing," Sakura said. "This is difficult to find."

"They grow wild near the temple," Kujyou said. "We use them for a lot of different poultices and remedies."

"We'll have to develop trade with your temple," Sakura said. "Tsunade-sama will be thrilled."

Sakura stayed to talk with him. She told herself that it was from processional interest, and not because his muscular body and handsome face were easy to look at. He had a strong jaw crossed with a thin scar. She wondered how a priest had managed to get a scar that looked like it came from an edged weapon.

He explained his odd weapon. "The crescent is for beheading, and the spade is for burying bodies."

"How efficient," Sakura said. She pictured him swinging the staff gracefully, his muscles rippling as he fought.

She finally had to leave, and she was ashamed of her thoughts. _I'm a doctor. I don't have time for this silliness._

But that night she dreamed of the handsome priest. After her rounds the next day, she went to his room, but he was gone. She was disappointed. _I need to know more about those roots,_ she thought, shutting out the steamy dream from the night before.

 _It's just professional,_ she thought. She found out from a nurse that the priest had checked himself out an hour before, stating that he was leaving immediately for home.

"On that foot?" Sakura asked.

"We tried to tell him that chakra healing isn't magic, and he should wait at least two days to travel, but he said he wanted to get home."

Sakura didn't know why she took it upon herself to go after him, but she didn't want him to ruin his foot.

There was only the main gate leading northward out of the village, so she went there, and she found him with two chunin, loading donkeys with supplies at one of the trading outposts.

"You can't leave yet," Sakura said. "Your foot isn't ready. You'll injure yourself."

"I'll ride," he said. "We can use the donkeys until we reach the mountains, but that will be weeks. Your master is sending these two ninjas with me to open trade routes."

"I suppose that will all right then," Sakura said. _This is ridiculous,_ she thought _I don't want him._ But something about him enticed her. _It isn't like anyone else has any claim on me,_ she thought. She didn't belong with Kujyou. He was a priest, and he was leaving. He was unobtainable, just like Sasuke.

 _I am really fucked up in the head,_ she thought.

"You know, we could use a doctor to teach us more modern medical techniques. You could come with me."

For just a moment it was tempting, the idea of being his wife, but then she thought about what it would cost her. Leaving the village she loved to be with a man she barely knew?

"I can't," she said

"There's someone you're staying for?" he asked.

"Not really. I just can't leave my village."

"I understand," Kujyou said. He flashed a charming smile. "But at least I can tell the people at home that I met a doctor with dragon eyes."

A creepy man watched her from across the street. He pointed at her menacingly. She remembered seeing him twice that day, and she crossed the street, ready to fight him if he was a ninja in disguise stalking her.

"Why are you following me?" she asked.

"You aren't meant for him," he said. "It will invalidate the prophesy."

Sakura backed away from him. _Poor old nut job,_ she thought. But she knew he was right. She might not be meant for anyone, but she certainly wasn't meant for any man that would take her away from Konoha.


End file.
